-CASE DIGEST-
SUBJECT: LAW ON PUBLIC CORPORATION
Pelaez vs. Auditor-General
GR No. L-23825, 15 SCRA 569
December 24, 1965
Topic: Revised Administrative Code; President has no power to create
municipal corporations
FACTS: The President, purporting to act pursuant to
Sec 68 of the Revised Administrative Code (RAC), issued EOs 93 to 121, 124 and
126 to 129; creating 33 municipalities. Soon after, Emmanuel Pelaez, as Vice
President of the Philippines and as taxpayer, instituted the present special civil
action, for a writ of prohibition with preliminary injunction, against the
Auditor General, to restrain him, as well as his representatives and agents,
from passing in audit any expenditure of public funds in implementation of said
executive orders and/or any disbursement by said municipalities.
He instituted the present special civil action
challenging the constitutionality of said EOs on the ground, among others, that
Section 68 of the RAC relied upon constitutes an undue delegation of
legislative power to the President. The challenged Sec 68 provides:
“the President x x x may by executive order define the boundary, or boundaries, of any
province, subprovince, municipality, [township] municipal district, or other
political subdivision, and increase or diminish the territory comprised therein,
may divide any province into one or more subprovinces, separate any political
division x x x into
such portions as may be required, merge any of such subdivisions or portions
with another x x x”
Issue: Does Section 68 of the Revised
Administrative Code (RAC) constitute an undue delegation of legislative power?
RULING: Yes. The authority to create municipal
corporations is essentially legislative in nature. Sec 68 of the RAC, insofar
as it grants to the President the power to create municipalities does not meet
the well-settled requirements for a valid delegation of the power to fix the
details in the enforcement of a law. It does not enunciate any policy to be
carried out or implemented by the President. Indeed, without a statutory
declaration of policy xxx, there would be no means to determine, with
reasonable certainty, whether the delegate has acted within or beyond the scope
of his authority.* It is essential, to forestall a violation of the principle
of separation of powers, that the law: (a) be complete in itself x x x and (b) x
x x fix a standard to which the delegate must conform x x x.
The completeness test and sufficient standard test
must be applied concurrently, not alternatively. In delegating legislative
power to another branch of the government by law, it is essential, to forestall
a violation of the principle of separation of powers, that said law: (a) be
complete in itself—it must set forth therein the policy to be executed, carried
out or implemented by the delegate—and (b) x x x fix a standard—the limits of
which are sufficiently determinate or determinable—to which the delegate must
conform in the performance of his functions.
Section 68 of the Revised Administrative Code does
not meet these well settled requirements for a valid delegation of the power to
fix the details in the enforcement of a law. It does not enunciate any policy
to be carried out or implemented by the President. Neither does it give a
standard sufficiently precise to avoid the evil effects above referred to.
If the President could create a municipality, he
could, in effect, remove any of its officials, by creating a new municipality
and including therein the barrio in which the official concerned resides, for
his office would thereby become vacant. Thus, by merely brandishing the power
to create a new municipality (if he had it), without actually creating it, he
could compel local officials to submit to his dictation, thereby, in effect,
exercising over them the power of control denied to him by the Constitution.
WHEREFORE, the Executive Orders in question are hereby declared null and
void ab initio and the respondent permanently restrained from passing in audit
any expenditure of public funds in implementation of said Executive Orders or
any disbursement by the municipalities above referred to.
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